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It was prompted by the realization that there was no risk or timing necessary for using the rest skill as it were. Increasingly of late I've observed either people using macros, or even more effectively, typing 'rest', dropping down to the next line using shift+enter (or ctrl+enter depending on browser client), and typing guard on the next line, entering them both at once. It reached a point where, for most players, hitting them in rest became a literally impossible feat even if you were anticipating it and watching closely for the moment.

Through the little testing I've done, the new rest delay is still relatively hard to catch but not impossible. The rest delay is half the duration of the attacking delay from a normal attack, 1 second, minus any latency you have, leaving a split second to actually catch the rest. It's enough time that the anticipating fighter can catch it if he has his next attack lined up waiting for it, but not if he hesitates to react, or is unable to attack because he is recovering from a previous one, adding some risk and strategy to when we rest that was always meant to be there.

The rest mechanic is otherwise unchanged, it still recovers the same amount of fatigue and is still the most vulnerable stance to be hit in.

Comment

Combat experience (or CombatXP as the system is officially called) is an unreleased system intended to eventually replace the IC martial guidelines as the game's means of pacing skill advancement in dueling skills. It is still in the early testing phases and quite incomplete as of yet.

Comment

In exchanges where both the attacker and defender are using practice weapons only, if armor is struck, Duel 2.0 will assume the match to be a practice match and conclude the duel without the need to destroy the armour (which is impossible with a rebate) before ending the duel. This means you no longer have to @withdraw to end a practice match while wearing armour, consequently it addresses an issue where combat xp could not be earned when fighting someone in armour due to @withdrawing.

Comment

This morning I've made a few tweaks to the Weapon Traits Library for Castle Marrach. This is the system used by both MCombat and the regular Dueling code that determines how a weapon behaves based on its properties (ie: strongcut, weakguard, etc).

The changes are balancing tweaks made to address a long standing issue of certain weapons that can be wielded in either one or two hands (chiefly the longsword and longspear) consistently being either too strong or too weak depending on which direction they're tweaked.

The shortlist of changes is as follows:

The trait strongattack has been added to the library, and adds +1 skill modifier to all attack types be they cut, thrust or feint. This effect will stack with strongcut or strongthrust for a total of +2 if both effects are present. This trait was given to the two handed sword and the two handed bludgeon, but not the two handed spear.

The trait weakattack has been added to the library, and adds a -1 skill modifier to all attack types. This similarly stacks with weakcut and weakthrust. This is given to polearm weapons only when wielding them in one hand.

Shields no longer reduce the fatigue damage you take on a successful hit roll, and instead add a constant +2 modifier to defense rolls in any stance (making it twice as effective as the "long" weapon stat which adds +1 defense in any stance).

The heavy stat on two handed bludgeons now adds +1 to all attack rolls, this stacks with strongcut and strongattack.

Strongcut was added to one handed bludgeons.

The way this balances out in the end is that all weapon sets end up with a final modifier of +2 when combining all their bonuses and penalties to both offense and defense, and thus should be completely balanced, though suited to different skill sets and styles. This is what the final result looks like below:

Note that this library does not affect weapon damage for MCombat, it only affects the hit modifiers for these weapons (ergo your chance to deal any fatigue damage upon attack, in either duel 2.0 or MCombat).

Comment

As a long time devotee of dueling in this game and recently coming back to the fold to test the waters, I want to give you my profoundest thanks for such an awesome overhaul. I certainly have not fully grasped all the nuances of the new system, but this is such a massive upgrade its really awesome and I can't cheer you and the other staffers enough for doing it. So thank you!